The institutional grammar of data protection in Brazil

Lizandro Liu of the Fundação Getulio Vargas in Brazil will present at the October Institutional Grammar Research Initiative (IGRI) virtual research seminar.

Abstract:

This presentation investigates the institutional grammar of data governance in Brazil. Using the analytical lens of the Institutional Grammar Tool (IG), we deconstructed the institutional statements of the decrees regulating the General Data Protection Law of Brazilian municipalities with more than 500,000 inhabitants, in order to classify the different grammatical elements that inform municipal data protection and governance strategies.

In this presentation we examine the construction of the concepts of data protection, data governance and privacy, as well as the institutional construction of data protection in Brazil. The study has an empirical bias, in order to answer the following questions: (1) what is the institutional design of the strategies adopted by municipalities, in the context of the federation, for the protection of personal data and the privacy of citizens? (2) what is the complexity and linguistic diversity of municipal decrees; (3) what are the implications of this design for the effectiveness of data protection in Brazil?

The presentation concludes that the data protection strategies formulated are more concerned with bureaucratic control of data processing than with the actual realization of emerging citizenship rights.